1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to data recovery techniques and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for performing granular restoration of data objects from virtual and non-virtual machine images stored on sequential backup media.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a typical computing environment, an organization may employ any number of technologies to process, store, protect, recover, produce and secure mission critical data. For example, the organization may employ one or more data protection systems to backup and recover the mission critical data after a disaster or data corruption. Furthermore, the organization may employ one or more virtualization techniques to create one or more abstract computer resources (e.g., virtual machines, virtual applications, virtual desktops, virtual hardware devices and/or the like) from physical computer resources. Moreover, the typical computing environment may include one or more data storage systems for facilitating permanent storage, retrieval and transmission of the mission critical data throughout a computer network.
In addition, the typical computing environment may include one or more database management systems for organizing and retrieving structured data (e.g., tables) within one or more databases. For example, the one or more databases may include various data objects (e.g., emails, word documents, spreadsheets and/or the like), which are regularly backed up through the one or more data storage systems (e.g., magnetic tape drives) as one or more machine image (i.e., virtual machine or non-virtual machine image files arranged in a format, such as .VHD, .VMDK or .V2I). As the amount of data to be backed up increases, the number of backup volumes (e.g., magnetic tapes) also increases significantly.
The typical computing environment may provide granular restoration to facilitate data recovery of individual data objects within a volume. Furthermore, system information for the volume may be brought back online and available to users at the expense of processing overhead. Currently, granular restoration is achieved by staging an entire machine image (i.e., files) from a tape drive onto a disk. Then, the machine image is mounted in order to extract individual data objects. Such a conventional approach requires a significant amount of resources (e.g., processing time and storage space) for the staging process even when there is a very small amount of data to be restored. Furthermore, such a conventional approach does not apply to Virtual MICROSOFT Exchange Server protection.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for performing granular restoration of data objects from virtual and non-virtual machine images that are stored on sequential backup media.